1. Field of Invention
This invention is related to systems and methods for cleaning refrigerated display cases.
2. Description of Related Art
There are numerous conventional display cases that display a variety of products and foods such as meat, dairy products, beverages and frozen food. These display cases have historically been unsanitary as they trap tissues, blood, or sugary syrups, such as the syrups contained in frozen fruit juice. For example, meat and poultry are usually displayed on top of small pads disposed on trays and generally wrapped in stretch film and a heat shield to prevent leakage. However, regardless of the type of packaging, some or all of the packages will eventually permit leakage through a seam or a tear of the wrapping.
The food or product packages are generally displayed on top of wire racks or trays, which are mounted on brackets attached to the walls of the display case. The leakage from the packages will generally drip down below the racks onto pans disposed in the bottom of the case. These drippings are unsightly to consumers and generally have horrible odors. Most importantly, the drippings are unsanitary.
The conventional or standard way of dealing with this problem is to manually unload all of the products from the display case onto rolling racks and move the racks into a chilled storage room if the product is temperature sensitive. The display case is then deactivated or turned off and washed by spraying water and cleaners into the case. After rinsing and drying, the product is placed back into the display case. This procedure requires a tremendous amount of time to perform.
An alternative solution is to line the cases with padding designed to absorb the drippings. This method is costly, messy, and still unsanitary.
To reduce the visibility of drippings to customers, black matting is often placed underneath the racks. However, the drippings and juices will eventually spoil to produce an unpleasant odor for the consumer. It is also still unsanitary. Further, these techniques still require the case to be periodically emptied and manually cleaned to remove the soiled pads and mats.
In order to cope with the problems and costs associated with manually cleaning a display case, designs of automatic cleaning systems have been developed such as those disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,320,964, 4,315,414, 4,416,120, and 6,237,350. However, these automatic cleaning systems have numerous disadvantages and shortcomings.